Briefing: Social Housing in Manchester

There are at least 320,000 people without a home in Britain today. At the root of this is a long-term failure to build enough social homes.

Despite this urgent need, some local authorities have had a poor record of securing the delivery of the social homes that are desperately required. Manchester City Council is one of these local authorities.

Last year, only 28 social homes were delivered in Manchester – less than 1% of the total new homes. This comes at a time when over 4,000 people were recorded as homeless and nearly 13,500 households are waiting for social housing in Manchester.  

There are issues within the national policy climate – such as the cost of land and insufficient government grant for social housing delivery – that have severely impacted on local authorities’ ability to secure social housing.

However, in Manchester, a significant cause is the council’s weak local policies, which make it easy for developers to get out of providing social housing.  

We are calling on Manchester City Council to:

1. Develop social housing requirements within its local plan. In line with Shelter’s future of social housing report, the council must do everything possible to secure decent social homes that are affordable to all those who would benefit from them.

2. Remove get-out clauses from local planning to make sure developers are unable to sidestep their responsibility to build social homes.

3. Ensure developers provide 20% affordable housing on all developments, as required by the council’s local policy.